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Right, because RCA TVs and Apple iPhones are absolutely comparable. They both display moving images. They both play sound. And they are both internet-connected devices running software written and updated by a single party. That party maintains a persistent connection to them, and has an avowed interest in becoming a media distribution power. Oh, wait.

I am not suggesting that Apple will literally play streaming video over all these devices. However, it's an interesting way to think about the vested power here. They have 90 million devices that they essentially own in everyone's pockets, backpacks and living rooms. They are one update, one App Store app, away from becoming bigger than all four broadcast networks at their peak.

I can develop an app to crowdsource movie recommendations using Agile methodologies and heavy automation with SOAP communication between layers.

If I wrote a few paragraphs concerning this project these words would have far more meaning within the context of the description. This is a valid use of the word "crowdsourcing," because it's within the context of a real project and it communicates a real concept.

igrigorik writes "The generality and simplicity of Google's Map-Reduce is what makes it such a powerful tool. However, what if instead of using proprietary protocols we could crowd-source the CPU power of millions of users online every day? Javascript is the most widely deployed language — every browser can run it — and we could use it to push the job to the client. Then, all we would need is a browser and an HTTP server to power our self-assembling supercomputer (proof of concept + code). Imagine if all it took to join a compute job was to open a URL."

tedivm writes "Massachusetts Governor Devil Patrick recently launched his new website which allows users to voice their opinions and vote on the issues that matter most to them. According The Boston Globe "It will allow users to discuss and organize around political and civic issues and to tell Patrick they support a particular issue — wind farms, for example — by voting with the click of a mouse. Aides said they will track the discussions on the website and alert Patrick when large numbers of users begin aligning behind an issue. In response, they said, the governor will occasionally post his own comments or take action." Already there are posts about the commonwealth's decision to adopt the OpenDocument standard."